Enter the Tween Years

Well... it's hard to believe when you look at her stature, but Princess TomGirl is officially entering the elite group of Tweens. I just set her up with an email address yesterday and she's already hooked (hmmm... could it be that His and Her Royal Highness have made it look so enticing with the amount of time they are on-line?). Anyway, she's been emailing us, her Grandma and a friend. She's called everyone else to see if they have an account too (no need to thank us parents of her friends :) She sent me an email with the title "Humiliation Nation"... totally cracked me up. In it she proceeded to tell me that she didn't want me to humiliate her by having people sing Happy Birthday to her at a restaurant like they did last year... oh - and to not say "did it just get up and walk away?" when referring to missing items. I tried to explain to her that our family tends to be a little sarcastic, but she didn't want to hear any of that. So now I'll walk on egg shells as I figure out how to relate to my Tween.

On another note. I had been encouraging her to go to a Christian camp this summer and she just did not want to be that far away from us. There was a part of me that was thinking she really needs the time to explore and be with other Christian friends (under the watchful eye of someone I trust, of course!). However, there was another part of me that was like "yay!" as she really loves being with her family and that is so precious to me. We've always looked at other families where the teen and older kids LOVE spending time with their families and wanted to emulate that. So here I was thinking we were doing a great job. A week or two passes and after talking with a friend one or two days she changes her mind and is now gung-ho about going. The power of peer pressure is unreal.